Comedy should be taken just as seriously as tragedy, Associate Professor of English Benedict Whalen said at the Lyceum’s first Friday Forum of the semester.

“We have a steady line of critics, poets, and thinkers who affirm the importance and the seriousness of the tragic form,” Whalen said. “What place does laughter have at the academic table?”

Friday Forums are opportunities for professors to discuss their research and interests in an extracurricular — yet still academic — environment, according to senior Josie Nolen, president of the club.

Whalen said when understood in its traditional sense, comedy is more than just slapstick, witticisms, or laughter. It is a story that ends happily rather than sadly, and often ends in marriage.

Whalen challenged the audience to consider whether comedy seen in this light is truly less deserving of attention than tragedy.

“Why do we tend to assume that existential angst is more worthy of study than a lover joyfully singing?” Whalen asked. “Does the one relate to or capture our human nature more essentially than the other?”

Whalen said because Aristotle names happiness, or “eudaimonia,” as the highest good for man, the Western heritage includes man’s searching for happiness and taking it seriously.

“It’s significant that we don’t have Aristotle’s treatise on comedy,” Whalen said. “But if comedy is the genre related to and concerned with happiness, it does seem to me that we ought to take it seriously, and I think that Aristotle would agree with that.”

Whalen drew on two more figures to clarify his argument for comedy: Plato and 20th-century philosopher Josef Pieper.

In book seven of Plato’s “Laws,” several men have a discussion concluding in the insignificance of human affairs in comparison to the divine. However, they agree that the most significant human actions will be those through which man propitiates the gods, according to Whalen.

From a Christian perspective, human affairs are most significant as they touch man’s relationship with God, and, in man’s highest way, that is done through prayer, Whalen said.

Meanwhile, Whalen said Pieper argues one of the foundations of Western culture is leisure. The heart of leisure consists of festival or celebration. Pieper lists both Mardi Gras and a wedding as examples of festival and celebration.

“What is the literary genre that deals with festival and marriage most intimately? Of course, it’s comedy,” Whalen said. “In some ways, we might see comedy as a valuable preparation for prayer and divine worship.”

According to Whalen, the Christian life itself is a comedy simply because it has a happy ending.

Quoting the scholar I.A. Richards, Whalen said, “The least touch of any theology which has a compensating heaven to offer the tragic hero is fatal [to tragedy].”

Freshman Drew Ebert said he enjoyed Whalen’s use of a variety of comedies from Aristophanes to Shakespeare.

“He gave a very fascinating analysis of what a true comedy is, and how we’ve kind of misunderstood it,” Ebert said. “We think the tragedies are where the deepest things are, but, really, comedies are very crucial for understanding life as well.”

Sophomore Ava Caggiano said she came to the lecture after seeing the 1993 movie adaptation of “Much Ado About Nothing,” causing her to consider why comedies were included in the great books canon.

“A key takeaway is that comedy gets at the high and beautiful and sometimes divine parts of the human experience, and that’s worth looking at,” Caggiano said.